The Northridge Earthquake of 1994
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For most Americans, January 17, 1994 was a holiday. The date marked the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday. Government offices were closed and observance ceremonies were attended. For the residents of Los Angeles, however, January 17 was be spent quite differently. On that particular Monday morning, the city awoke to natural disaster. The temblor struck at 4:31 a.m. local time. It had been roughly six decades since a major earthquake had occurred directly under an urban area in the United States. The event resulted in the loss of life, thousands of injuries, and enormous damage. Indeed, the Northridge earthquake eventually proved to be the costliest natural disaster in the nation's history. California earthquakes are tectonic in nature. They result from the relentless motion of two crustal plates, the Pacific plate and the North American plate. These giant slabs of the Earth's crust literally "float" upon the "hot, sticky mantle" (Blakeslee A20). At present, the Pacific plate is moving in a northwesterly direction relative to the North American plate. This movement occurs at a rate of about one inch per year. Many areas of California have been highly active geologically for quite some time. In fact, the state is broken into a series of crustal blocks separated by faults. Within the Los Angeles basin, for example, there exists a huge network of faults extending over a 3,600-square-mile area (Blakeslee A20). Th
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a tendency to bounce off rocks and sediments of different densities. Hence, people farther away from the epicenter may have experienced ground shaking for as long as 45 seconds. In addition, the rupture front's progression produced a distinct pulse of energy about 2 seconds after the earthquake began. This led some to believe that the earthquake actually consisted of two individual geologic events.
Although the Northridge quake had no immediate foreshocks, it was preceded by seismic activity. A swarm of small earthquakes occurred along the coast of west of Los Angeles in the days preceding the Northridge temblor. Moreover, four of these quakes were between magnitudes 3.0 and 3.7. However, while the fault plane responsible for these quakes also dipped southward, it was located at least 15.5 miles south of the Northridge fault.
As might be expected, the Northridge earthquake was followed by a multitude of aftershocks. Over 3,000 aftershocks greater than magnitude 1.5 were recorded within three weeks of the primary event. Moreover, from January 18, 1994, to July 16, 1994, there were approximately 6,300 aftershocks (U.S. Geological Survey 389-396).
Ground displacements from the Northridge earthquake were determined from
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Approximate Word count = 3911
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)
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